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How we view ourselves and how we wish to be seen by others cannot be separated from the stories we tell about our past. In this sense all memory is in crisis, torn between conflicting motives of historical reflection, political expediency, and personal or collective imagination. In Crises of Memory and the Second World War, Susan Suleiman conducts a profound exploration of contested terrain, where individual memories converge with public remembrance of traumatic events. Suleiman is one of a handful of scholars who have shaped the interdisciplinary study of memory, with its related concepts of trauma, testimony, forgetting, and forgiveness. In this book she argues that memories of World War II, while nationally specific, transcend national boundaries, due not only to the global nature of the war but also to the increasingly global presence of the Holocaust as a site of collective memory. Among the works she discusses are Jean-Paul Sartre’s essays on the occupation and Resistance in France; Marcel Ophuls’ innovative documentary on Klaus Barbie, tried for crimes against humanity; Istv?n Szab?’s film Sunshine, a chronicle of Jewish identity in central Europe; literary memoirs by Jorge Semprun and Elie Wiesel; and experimental writing by child survivors of the Holocaust.
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Crises of Memory and the Second World War Crises of Memory and the Second World War Susan Rubin Suleiman harvard university press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England Copyright 䉷 2006 by Susan Rubin Suleiman All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2008 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Suleiman, Susan Rubin, 1939– Crises of memory and the Second World War / Suleiman, Susan Rubin Suleiman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-02206-5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-674-02762-6 (pbk.) 1. World War, 1939–1945—Historiography. 2. Memory—Social aspects. 3. Memory—Psychological aspects. 4. Narration (Rhetoric) I. Title. D743.42.S85 2006 940.5301'9—dc22 2005049540 For Michael and Daniel once again, always Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Crises of Memory 1 2 3 4 5 ix 1 “Choosing Our Past” jean-paul sartre as memoirist of occupied france 13 Narrative Desire the “aubrac affair” and national memory of the french resistance 36 Commemorating the Illustrious Dead jean moulin and andre´ malraux 62 History, Memory, and Moral Judgment after the Holocaust marcel ophuls’s hotel terminus: the life and times of klaus barbie 77 Anamnesis: Remembering Jewish Identity in Central Europe after Communism istva´ n szabo´ ’s sunshine 106 viii 6 7 8 9 Contents Revision: Historical Trauma and Literary Testimony the buchenwald memoirs of jorge semprun 132 Do Facts Matter in Holocaust Memoirs? wilkomirski/wiesel 159 The Edge of Memory: Experimental Writing and the 1.5 Generation perec/federman 178 Amnesia and Amnesty: Reflections on Forgetting and Forgiving 215 Notes 235 Works Cited 261 Index 279 Acknowledgments As always, this book could not have been written without the help of others. I am grateful to the Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and to the Florence Gould Foundation for the fellowship and the research grant they accorded me in the spring and summer of 2001. The Leverhulme Trust of Great Britain made possible the research professorships I held at the Institute of Romance Studies of the University of London in the summers of 2002 and 20